I'm not sure on Banjo, though...
I doubt Microsoft or Nintendo really care a thing about Banjo Kazooie, nowadays, as the series has just been sitting on the back burner since 2008
I understand your position, and I’d believe it if it weren’t for two things. One: Spcial Media. Phill Spencer has at least acknowledged the Banjo love in the past, and all of the people screaming at them about this is probably what got them talking in the first place. Two: Those Crash and Spyro revivals have been doing pretty well. The greedy executives at Microsoft are probably eyeing Banjo hungrily right now if they’re not stupid.
I think it’s likely that the online outcry coupled with ballot responses got them talking about this a while ago, maybe during the planning stages of Smash4 and Ultimate. And then the Crash and Spyro trilogies (either one, the other, or both) pushed them over the edge. I can even see it being that they intentionally put Banjo in the “DLC for Ultimate” collum early because having him be DLC for 4 would been he’d be bade game for Ultimate and I can imagine that would be a very complicated thing they’re rather avoid. They’ve already got their hands full dealing with Square’s lawyers. So they agreed to have Banjo be DLC for the Switch project to better split the revenue.
At least, that’s how I see it happening. I could be wrong. But this makes a lot of sense. Not to mention we have a kind of case study. Diddy Kong Racing DS. Half of those characters (Timber, Bumper, Pipsy, and Tiptup) were Rare owned. (Krunch is a Kremling so he went to Nintendo). The reason that game worked however, is that Microsoft had no stake in the handheld race so they were willing to cooperate. The Switch is a handheld system, and sense it’s not a very powerful system ports of new next gen games often come out much later. As such the Switch rarely directly competes with the Xbox or PlayStation when you think about it. It either has exclusive titles that only come to it, or ports so much later that MS and Sony have the lions share of the casual consumer base.
squareisstingy.exe has stopped working
Bro... Bro...
Most of my favorite Smash characters are shill picks
Deny it all you want. You know it’s true.